THE CATASTROPHE xoi
persons and children. These unfortunates were killed in secret
so that their flesh might be eaten or even sold. The Moscow
correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse has reported on these
occurrences on the basis of judgments in the Courts. Professor
Auhagen gives a similar account after hearing the statements
of Russian refugees in the Schneidemuhl camp. "Horrible
cases of cannibalism are reported," he says. "There are 150
people in prison at Kiev for cannibalism." Mr. and Mrs.
Stebalo, in the story of their Russian travels, say: "Human
flesh and the flesh of animals which have died of disease is
salted and dried. It is then minced and baked into rissoles.
Not only the flesh of people who have died is eaten, but also
that of persons who have been killed. A mother killed her sick
son almost under the eyes of the other villagers in order to
eat him. Nobody can feel sure of not being killed in his turn
to-morrow. It is true that cannibalism is punished, but not
nearly as severely as, say, the theft of a horse or a cow from
the collective farm."
This account of the Stebalos tallies fully with the accounts
of other witnesses, above all Harry Lang, and the letters of
German settlers. One of these writes1: "There is cannibalism
in the Russian villages. In one of these villages a son had eaten
his father, so they tied his head round his neck and made him
walk through the village."
The occurrence of cannibalism is also confirmed by the
German specialist, mentioned several times above, who was
able to visit every part of the country. He says: "Cases of
cannibalism have undoubtedly occurred in the governments
of Poltava and Chernigov. I was told the names of villages
where they happened, for example Choshevatoy, a village
close to Wynitsa, where the flesh of people who had died was
eaten quite openly. The same thing happened at Maikop."
-Elsewhere he writes: "A woman left Moscow to visit her
brother in a small town in the Ukraine, probably Kremenchug.
1 In the Deutsche Zeitung Bessarabiens.